Hamlet as Booker's Seven Basic Plots Analysis: None Plot

Plot Type :

Christopher Booker's analysis of the Seven Basic Plots cites Hamlet as a specific counterexample to his theory of basic plots. According to Booker, The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark doesn't fit into the mold of the tragedy. After you read about how Booker sees things, be sure to check out our discussion of "Genre."

Sure, Hamlet has an anticipation stage, in which he is frustrated by his mother's remarriage, but he doesn't know that his father's murder is at the root. What should follow – the dream stage, when Hamlet feels like he is accomplishing his goals – never happens. Hamlet does confidently promise his father that he will swiftly carry out his revenge. But he just doesn't do it: he spends most of the play searching for more reasons for revenge or yelling at himself for not having done anything at all. The whole play is an endless frustration stage with no dream stage preceding it – not to mention that Hamlet expresses the death wish, which should come at the end, almost from his first lines.

According to Booker, Hamlet also contains some elements of the "Rebirth" plot, since Hamlet seems to be struggling for most of the play under the dark shadow of his own mysterious delay. But Hamlet's calm readiness for death in the final act does not seem exactly like a redemption; nor does his completion of his revenge and his violent death. For Booker, then, we can just think of Hamlet as a mysterious exception.